


Most Terrible Poverty

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can’t have it all, so they at least take something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Terrible Poverty

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by Hithelleth

In the middle of an army, it was surprisingly easy to be lonely. Nora sat on her cot, fingers steepled in front of her lips, and stared blankly at the bare wall opposite. There was a note on Mia’s bed, her excuses penned in her clumsy, careful letters.

‘Job came up. Good pay, couldn’t turn it down. Later.’

When you were alone, you couldn’t help but think of things. Thing like the fact it’s been half a year since you added anything to your ‘get out of town’ fund or the fifth of whiskey in the cabinet that was supposed to be medicinal and wouldn’t be missed.

Nora rubbed her hands through her hair impatiently, pulling her curls out impatiently out of the braid. She knew what she was going to do, why bother pretending. She got up and stripped down to bare skin, scraping the sweat off with a damp flannel.

The box had been under her bed for a week. She pulled it out and opened it, a damson-dark flush spreading under her skin as she took in the tangle of lace and silk and elastic. It had been laid out when the box arrived, like a woman had just melted away from inside them. It had been Nora who balled them up and shoved them into the corner of the box, blushing too hard to even look at them.

She’d fucked General Matheson on a dare, flying high on cheap booze and a pocket full of diamonds. It had been a one-time thing, a weird feather for her cap for when the headed west.

California. Mia had always wanted to go. OK, these days Disneyland was probably as much of a nightmare as Disneyworld, but that wasn’t the point. It was the promised land. Go there, settle down, get a ranch or something. Stop hurting people - even ones that deserved it - for a living.

Only when Monroe had offered them another job and another… Well, California was a long way, and two pockets full of diamonds was better than one.

Somewhere in there Nora ended up Miles’ woman. Not that they’d talked about it, but Nora figured it. She couldn’t have got laid in the Militia if she stripped naked, did jumping jackets and told them there were bullets hidden in her pussy.

And apparently, the women of warlords - Generals - got fancy knickers.

She put them on, smoothing lace over her ass and snapping the garters against her thigh. It felt weird. She’d been such a pretty princess of a girl as a kid, beauty pageants and spirit squad, magazines about kissing boys and dressing like celebrities. After the Blackout, she’d forgotten all about it.

Hell, she didn’t even have a dress to wear with them. She just tugged a clean pair of jeans and a low t-shirt on, adjusting her boobs in their lacy cups to maximum effect. She’d do.

It wasn’t like it was the first time she’d flashed her assets at a guy. Just the first time it sorta mattered. Maybe. To her, anyhow.

In her absence, Nora’s brain provided Mia’s eyeroll for her little sister. Mia wasn’t impressed with Miles - or she was, but not in a way that made her think he was a good guy to keep around.

Nora pulled the flask of whiskey from under her bed and took a swig, the raw grain curling her tongue and settling into her stomach with a warm heat that was almost like confidence. She shrugged her jacket on and headed out of the barracks, giving the finger to the bounty hunters who wolf-whistled her.

* * *

 

Rachel sat at the dinner table and poked at her dinner absently, chasing a gravy soaked potato around the edge of her plate. She could, from under her lashes, see Miles’ mouth tighten and twist with annoyance.

_‘I’m being fucking nice aren’t I?’ he rasped in her memory, hand in her hair and her face shoved down until she could feel the heat of the soup against her skin. ‘Stop fucking flinching!’_

She made herself eat the potato, and a chunk of wine-soaked venison. At least it was tender, easy to swallow, but all she could taste was the hot copper penny tang of fear. She reached for the bottle of wine to refill her glass.

‘No,’ Miles said flatly, closing his hand on top of hers. ‘You’ve had enough.’

Rachel gave him a sharp look. ‘My father now, are you?’

She bit her tongue on the rest of the jibe, swallowing it down like pebbles _. ‘Oh no, I forgot. Firing blanks aren’t you?’_ Saying it would just get her thrown back in her cell, and while she might be scared of Miles she was more scared of the long stretches of sanity eroding isolation. A month he’d left her in the dark once, the only sign she’d not been forgotten a sporadic loaf shoved through the door.

Besides, she didn’t need to say it. His brain filled in the blanks, and he couldn’t punish her for that. Not directly, anyhow.

‘Do you think Ben is any better at fending for himself these days?’ Miles asked, smiling thinly as he sopped up gravy with a heel of bread. ‘It’s been a bad year out there. Whole villages just starving to death. Over in St Louis we caught folk from the Plains bringing their kids over the river and leaving them on our side, so they didn’t have to watch them starve. Real _Hansel and Gretel_ shit.’

Her fingers tightened around the fork, knuckles showing white just for a second. He noticed. Bastard.

Before she had to think of something equally cruel to say back the door opened and a woman -  girl - walked in. Dark curls and all the hip-swaying confidence of youth and just the right dose of alcohol to make her eyes bright instead of bleary.

‘Hi, General, I got your present,’ she purred, then tripped over her own tongue as she saw Rachel. Confusion hurt and embarrassment flickered over her face, then she pulled herself together. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t realise you had company.’

Rachel gave her a thin smile. ‘Not exactly.’

Flustered the girl shoved her hair behind her ear and stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. Again. I’ll come back another time.’

‘No,’ Miles said, holding up his hand. His eyes stayed locked on Rachel’s face, colder than eyes the colour of good whiskey should be. That disturbing feline cruelty slid into his voice, dropping it to a purr. ‘Stay. Just having dinner with an old friend.’’

The emphasis he put on ‘old’ made Rachel choke on very ill-advised laughter. He was older than her, and really under the current circumstances a few wrinkles were hardly her primary worry.

‘I’ll need the wine,’ Rachel said pleasantly.

He glanced at her, shrugged and acquiesced. She poured herself a glass, right to the point where surface tension threatened to give way, and ignored the dinner. Miles had a different game in mind now.

It wasn’t entirely clear who he thought he was being cruel to, Rachel or the girl - Nora, Nora the bounty hunter. Rachel didn’t care. It was the only weapon she had: indifference her sword and shield in one.

Her only weapon and her biggest lie.

She wasn’t drunk. Maybe she wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, but she could to herself. When she let Miles lead her - them - into the bedroom, it wasn’t because she was afraid or scared to deny him. It was because she was _lonely_. Not the way she’d thought of the word before, when she’d spent a Saturday on her own at university or called Ben every day when he was studying in England.

That was just sentimentality and indulgence. Real loneliness was like a cancer eating at you from the soul out, an emptiness that you threw everything you were in and still couldn’t feel it up. It was wishing that Miles - the man who’d taken her away from her family, who’d hurt her and allowed her to be hurt - would touch her just so she could remember what it was like, have one more thing to feed the emptiness.

He never had, though. It was his Damocles sword - both threat and promise - but he’d never taken her to his bed. It didn’t matter if she said yes or not now - it would be rape. He didn’t want that to be what they were; he did still love her.

Maybe that’s why she wanted him to do it, to just taint everything they’d had so she could cut it away and be free of him. Finally. Maybe that’s why she never let it happen.

Nora wasn’t part of this, though. Not really. Rachel could touch her, taste her and be touched, tasted in return. It was heady, more intoxicating than the wine - a tactile overdose.

* * *

 

It was meant to be humiliating, a punishment. Why? Nora didn’t know. Maybe because they both loved him. She wasn’t stupid, old friends didn’t look at each other like that. Hatred of that complexity needed love as its roots. They had to fuck; he got to watch.

That didn’t mean Nora had to let it humiliate her. She liked women well enough. Not enough to be a lesbian, but sometimes it was just easier. No worries about pregnancy, no weird macho shit the next day and she liked breasts.

The blonde - Miles had refused to introduce her - had nice breasts, large and milky pale with a faded spray of freckles in her cleavage. Her nipples were full and dark rose-pink, puckering hard between Nora’s lips, and she gave a sharp, startled gasp at the damp flick of a tongue. Like she’d forgotten what it felt like.

It turned out the blonde wasn’t really into breasts. That was ok, Nora could tease her own nipples hard and the amount of time the blonde was willing to spend between her legs more than made up for it. She sprawled back on the bed, knees raised over the pale shoulders, and moaned low, ragged encouragement as thin, clever lips and a deft tongue lapped and nipped and suckled at her.

Thick tangles of honey-blonde hair looked pale against the tanned skin of Nora’s thighs and hips, tangling in the short curls of her bush. Her hands - clever, callused, slim fingers - stroked Nora’s thighs and the jut of her hip bones and the curve of her calves down to her ankles like she couldn’t get enough of skin.

They both had scars. The blob of thick scar-tissue on the inside of Nora’s forearm, like a sun drawn by a three year old, where a bounty had broken her arm; the row of shiny dollops on her shoulder where a farmer had caught her thieving in Texas. There were fine, thread thin scars on the blonde’s arms and the insides of her thighs, a neat, pre-Blackout caesarean cutting neatly between sharp hip-bones. Nora ignored the blonde’s and the blonde licked and explored every inch of Nora’s - like the cartography of the bounty hunter was her new hobby.

Her fingers were as clever inside Nora as they had been on her skin, trying rough and then gentling when Nora gasped her disagreement.

In the shadows, in the corner, Miles sprawled with his hand on his cock. His breath sped up, hot and ragged with desire, and Nora could hear the creak of his chair as he moved. She came with a little more drama than necessary, arching up into the blonde’s hands, all taut lines and warm, sweaty skin, groping enthusiastically at her breast while she moaned.

The blonde laughed, dry as dust and silent, against her shoulder. She was quiet when she came - controlled and contained. Just shudders and a sharply bitten lip. Nora could feel the tremors under her mouth, the clench and flutter of her sex around Nora’s fingers. It wasn’t for Miles, though. Nora had the feeling that was the point of it.

They lay tangled around each other for a while, the blonde’s face in Nora’s shoulder, and then Miles joined them. He didn’t touch the blonde, who chilled and shifted away to curl up at the top of the bed, but Nora had a feeling that was who he was fucking really.

* * *

 

They were asleep. Nora on her stomach, face pillowed on her arm, and Miles snoring softly against her shoulder. Tempted, just this once, Rachel reached out and brushed his hair out of his face. Her thumb lingered on his cheekbone, so sharp these days. He wasn’t taking care of it. She shouldn’t care - most of her didn’t, part of her still ached though.

Stupid.

When he didn’t wake, Rachel slid cautiously out of bed and scooped up her clothes. She padded into the other room - their dinner dishes congealing on the table - and dressed slowly. Her brain, rotted into holes though it was from disuse, fretted obsessively, recursively over the delirious options.

None of them made much sense: she wouldn’t get out of the Hall never mind out of the city and while she sometimes wanted to die, she never quite had the courage to go through with it. The chance, diminishing value though it had year by year, of seeing her children again always stayed her hand.

In the end she went to the door and asked the guard to escort her back to her cell, smirking tightly at their confusion.

She didn’t see Nora again - not for years.

 


End file.
